‘GOLDEN BOY’ PACKS A PUNCH

with his powerful new production of “Golden Boy,” Lincoln Center Theater’s 75th anniversary revival of Clifford Odets’ drama.

Like Sher’s stirring staging of Odets’ masterpiece “Awake and Sing!” in 2006, the new “Golden Boy” reveals the emotional core of each character and the visual and vernacular details of 1930s New York while probing the meaning of success to immigrant and first-generation Americans — all within the well-made framework of an exciting three-act melodrama.

And the “Golden Boy” cast — truly, it doesn’t get much better than this. In the lead role of the gifted Italian-American Joe Bonaparte, 25-year-old Seth Numrich, of “War Horse” fame, gradually coarsens from a naive, hopeful, respectful violin prodigy to a blunt-talking, power-driven boxer, determined to win the welterweight crown and with it money, fame and the girl he desires. The buoyant energy that lifts the early scenes becomes, almost literally, a death wish.

As his disappointed Italian immigrant father, Tony Shalhoub creates an almost unbearably sweet, sad and loving man; the actor masters and makes the most of even the Italian accent, halting delivery and outmoded slang in Odets’ dialogue.

Every one of the more than 20 expert actors brings that same vibrant, filled-to-the-brim quality to these roles, turning a 1937 play too often considered minor and dated into a tragic contemplation of the disillusionment and conflict that can come of chasing the wrong American dream.

Joe’s choice between his sensitivity to art and his desire for fame in the ring may sound improbably stark, even schematic, but Sher’s production makes his predicament complex and real. Joe’s confessions to his manager’s girlfriend, Lorna, are filled with pain that pulls from this broken yet empathetic woman her own tortured conflicts between tenderness and toughness. The cool blond beauty Yvonne Strahovski is wonderful in the part, her heartfelt affection for the boy as heartbreaking as her own despair.